It now appears as if Russian troops are at staging points to launch an invasion of Ukraine and the Intelligence Communities (IC) of the US and UK are pretty bullish on the invasion story. I formerly assessed the occupation of a “major” Ukrainian city as a 5% chance, with some kind of incursion into the Donetsk or Luhansk Oblasts region at 25%. And my original Metaculus assessment of “Will Russia invade Ukraine before 2023?” was 25% based around their criteria which was a bit loosely worded.

I’ve updated my forecast several times since, especially ahead of the non-stop warnings being pumped out by the US and European governments. Asking citizens to leave was an interesting moment, as was the closure of Western embassies. This heavily implied that the relevant Five Eye intelligence agencies thought the invasion was on. They will have access to information, and views of triggers and warnings, that myself and the usual Twitter crowd do not have. Finally, the recent observations of ground forces arriving at their form-up-points along the border seem to sell me on the pending invasion story. This was one of my triggers to reconsider my meta-theory on the bluff story and reassess the scenario.

The other trigger was a change in tone from Putin's public addresses, which has not happened. He is still publicly claiming that he's open to negotiations and that US propaganda is fueling the chance of conflict. I was expecting him to start addressing the people, reading passages from his old essays on how Ukraine is really Russia, and prompting the need for war. It might just be because Putin doesn't need to generate public support like Bush did in 2003, for example. But if he plans on using conscripts for an occupation, the lack of rhetoric is surprising. This is another example of incredibly contradictory and confusing information coming out of Ukraine.

As of yesterday, 19/02/2022, my probability of invasion was up to 83%. This has been a pretty sharp incline in probability from “no” to “yes”. Still, I really do think in late January there wasn’t enough information to distinguish this coming invasion from similar bluffs, like the one in early 2021. But now I’m heavily leaning the other way.

Russia’s options

Occupation

I’m fairly certain the required number of troops for a long-term occupation of Ukraine east of the Dnieper River is at least 80,000. At the US’ peak, they maintained a 1:1 deployment:readying ratio. So that’s ~160,000 soldiers required for an occupation in East Ukraine, or nearly half of Russia’s 400,000 full time soldier cadre tied up in Ukraine for the next [years * forever war reference]. I think that the more reasonable option here would be to draw in conscripts to supplement the career soldiers. Using conscripts for actual occupation duty is a very unpopular in Russia, but could be done in small enough numbers to make this the most viable option.

The terrain West of the Dneiper is better suited to an insurgency, which means occupation would require a lot more troops. Larger cities, better terrain and without the Dnieper River to fend off cross-border raids would all contribute to the complexity. Conscripts would need to be drawn on in great numbers and the whole Russian Army would switch to supporting this one occupation.

So my first take away: if Russia invades Ukraine, they are likely to reach the Dnieper, stop and occupy. If we see them push across the whole country, I think it’s likely that they intend to smash any military objectives and then withdraw back the Dnieper for an occupation. I still can't see an occupation of Kyiv being a long-term option.

Cut a deal and Run

I think an idea that I missed in my initial write up was that Russia can invade with the goal to quickly negotiate a deal and leave again. This circumvents a lot of the issues with prolonged occupations and forever wars. And I think it can meet Putin’s long-term goal of ensuring NATO never integrates Ukraine into the Organisation.

Genuinely hope concessions come, but invade if they don’t

I don’t believe that Putin had made a firm decision on an invasion this time last month. It was entirely possible for him to order a build-up, hope concessions rolled in from NATO or Ukraine, and win some credit with the siloviki crowd at home. The oligarchs would be reminded that Putin is a grand strategist and he gets another footnote in the history books. Without concessions, he only gets a non-NATO Ukraine with an invasion, and needs an invasion to generate domestic support.

This is one way that I explain all the reasons that an invasion shouldn’t happen and still explain all the reasons it looks like an invasion is really about to happen. Perhaps Putin has painted himself into a corner (or perhaps that's too much negative framing and he was always quite willing and capable of settling the issue with a war).

Results of a conflict

As with my Taiwan post, so much of modern war is tied up in airpower that Ukraine really doesn’t stand a chance in a conventional sense. Tanks, military installations, artillery, defensive structures: these are all great targets for Russia’s large air force. But even better than that: Russia had a lot of practice conducting strikes against militias in Syria. Syrian militias were taking over terrain and trying to hold it (as opposed to the Taliban in Afghanistan, who used hit and run tactics primarily). This means that their air force personnel will be fairly confident in their ability to break up Ukrainian reservists who are training for insurgency as we speak. I think we’ll see an effective display of airpower should Russia invade in the coming days or weeks.

Final thoughts

I don't think it's a forgone conclusion that Russia is invading. Most of my old points about why it's a terrible idea stand to reason. But troops are in form-up points which is the step before invasion. Not even they will know if they're "really" going, or whether this will be called off soon. But keeping troops in the field like that will be expensive, depleting stores, wearing down gear and soldiers. So it's a short-term deployment and we'll be getting our answers, either way, soon enough.

I read a prediction for a 22/02/2022 invasion date, which would have a nice, easy to remember ring to it for Putin, who is obsessed with history and his place in it.